TriBeCa Gallery Guide: New York’s Most Vibrant Art Scene

The large-scale arrival of new and veteran dealers has given the neighborhood its first unifying theme in 60 years. Here are three walks with our critics, a springboard to explore.

Galleries have been moving to TriBeCa for a good five years, but the migration has finally hit critical mass. As everyone from tiny new project spaces to the blue-chip titan David Zwirner floods in, this cast-iron and cobblestone neighborhood in Manhattan — south of Canal, north of Vesey and west of Broadway — is no longer just one option of many. For any New York-area gallery that needs to move or is opening another branch, TriBeCa is now the most exciting place to show contemporary art — the destination that has to be considered.

There are now at least 41 galleries in TriBeCa, according to the real estate broker Jonathan Travis — who placed 22 of those himself — compared with fewer than 20 galleries two years, and still more are set to move in. It’s not just because a savvy real estate broker found a cache of dormant retail spaces, either. Rather, the neighborhood’s layout and architecture — an endearing mix of sudden broad vistas, quiet nooks and river views — offer the perfect compromise between the art world’s romantic 1960s conception of itself and its current professionalized reality.

Once the home of New York’s central wholesale food market, TriBeCa is full of the same kind of industrial warehouse buildings and creaky tongue-and-groove wooden floors that give SoHo so much of its character. When the market moved to the Bronx in the early ’60s, the neighborhood was left with a desolate appearance that lasted long enough for a star turn in “Ghostbusters,” filmed two decades later outside Hook & Ladder Company 8 on North Moore Street. Still, 1980s TriBeCa was also magical, with air that often smelled of black pepper or roasting nuts, thanks to a few holdout wholesalers.